The Board of Governors of the Institute chooses an economist of
international eminence for the Chair for every two years. The person
chosen for the Chair has to spend at least three months in ISEC during
his/her tenure and interact with the faculty and students, give lectures and
seminars and undertake research. Under the arrangement the Institute
meets the cost of air travel to visit the Institute twice during the tenure
and the Professor is paid a monthly honorarium. The Chair is financed
by the interest received from the corpus granted by the Ministry of Finance.

Prof.
T. N. Srinivasan, Chairman, Department of Economics, Yale University was the first
V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor, and he was appointed for the term 1997–99.
During his tenure Prof. Srinivasan visited the Institute twice, worked closely with the faculty
and guided the students. He also gave a series of eight lectures on Indian Economy,
which has been brought out as a monograph "Eight Lectures on Indian Economic
Reforms" by the Oxford University Press.

For the period
1999–2001, Prof. Kaushik Basu, Carl Marks Professor, Cornell University was
appointed as the V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor.

Prof. Arvind
Panagariya, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Maryland was
appointed as the V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor from 2002-03.

Prof. Ravi
Kanbur, T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs and Professor of Economics at Cornell
University was appointed as V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2004-05.

Prof. James
Gilmore Manor, Professorial Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, University of
Sussex was appointed as V. K. R. V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2006-07.

Prof. Michael
Walton, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi and Adjunct
Lecturer in International Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University and also Visiting Professor for the 2007/08 semester of the Delhi School of
Economics was appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for the year 2008-09.

Prof. Ashutosh Varshney, Professor, Department of Political Science,
Brown Universitywas appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao Chair Professor for
the year 2010-11.

Prof. Gita Gopinath,
Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Harvard University was
appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao
Chair Professor for the year 2012-12.

Prof. David E Bloom, Clarence
James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography, Harvard School of Public
Health, Harvard University has been appointed as V.K.R.V. Rao
Chair Professor for the year 2013-14.